Their beauty was legendary and their grace renowned. But it was for their strength of character and virtue that the women of Montclair were most celebrated. For generations they presided over one of Virginia's oldest estates, placing family and honor above all else.
These are USED books, most in good condition. A couple have bend marks in the binding from reading them. The first four books are smaller in size (approximately 4 x 6.5) while the remainder of the books are approximately 5 x 7. Most of the books have a 2 x 4 white label inside the front cover which covers the name of the previous owner.
Marry Duncan Montrose! Noramary's heart was filled with despair as she saw the life that she and Robert dreamed about slip away.
Orphaned at age twelve, Noramary was sent to live with Aunt Betsy and Uncle William in colonial Virginia. Ever respectful and obedient, she was a blue-eyed angel they cherished as one of their own. But when an unfortunate course of events leads to Noramary's engagement to the man intended for her cousin, she found herself torn between destiny and desire.
Could she enter into marriage with a man she did not love? If only she could be sure that in taking the vows to love, honor and cherish, she would find happiness more pure and beautiful than she ever imagined.
When she first arrived in Virginia, unannounced, unescorted and with little but the clothing on her back, Lorabeth only wanted to escape an arranged marriage back in England. Instead she found a handsome stranger whose deep blue eyes held hers in an entrancing stare that set her heart racing. Lorabeth learned too late that this captivating man was her cousin Cameron Montrose.
Despite Lorabeth's efforts to put thoughts of Cameron out of her mind, he refused to be forgotten. He vowed to find a way for their forbidden love to be accepted by family, faith and honor.
Arvil was just a child when tragedy struck and took her parents' lives. If not for the kindness of her father's friend Graham Montrose, the frightened heiress would have been left all alone in the world. Thankfully this quiet handsome stranger welcomed Arvil into his home-and together they shared a life filled with friendship, trust, and love.
As Arvil grew so did her love for Graham, until what began as childish adoration developed into the devoted love and respect a woman feels for a man. Now it was Arvil's turn to offer guidance and help Graham look upon her not as his ward, but as the desirable beauty she was.
Sara Leighton was brokenhearted. The headstrong southern belle had pledged her love to a man she could not have. Certain she had lost her one chance at love and desperate to escape her stepmother's tyrannical rule, Sara accepted Clay Montrose's proposal of marriage.
With Clay she had a life of luxury, but despite her enviable position, Sara continued to long for what might have been. It wasn't until she bade farewell to the past that she was able to welcome the promise of new love into her heart and look to the future with breathless anticipation.
For some reason at just that moment, Garnet glanced up at the house and thought she saw a shadowy figure standing at the window of the downstairs master bedroom in the wing Malcolm shared with Rose. With a little clutching sensation, Garnet wondered if Rose had seen her talking with Malcolm and if she minded that Garnet's had been the last farewell.
Garnet shrugged and walked back into the garden. What difference did it make one way or the other? Malcolm belonged to Rose in a way he could never belong to her. All she had of Malcolm were memories of by-gone days.
Suddenly she remembered Malcolm's parting words: "Comfort Rose if you can, and be kind to her and little Jonathan."
Garnet gave her head a careless toss as if casting off such tiresome requests. Rose and Jonathan were not HER responsibility! And she had no intention of taking them on, in spite of what Malcolm had asked. Besides, there were plenty of servants to care for Jonathan, and Rose seemed content enough with her endless Bible reading and piano playing and walks in the woods. It is not any concern of MINE, Garnett assured herself.
"I have enough to do just taking care of myself!"
Yankee Bride/Rebel Bride is set against the turbulent backdrop of the Civil War South, and chronicles the life of Garnet Cameron, whose plan to marry the man of her dreams, Malcolm Montrose, is thwarted when he chooses a Northern bride. On the rebound, Garnet married Malcolm's brother, thus entwining the lives of all four at Montclair, the magnificent ancestral Montrose family home.
Blythe gazed into his eyes. It seemed as if she were looking into his very soul. Could she read genuine repentance there… or just regret that he had brought shame to himself, disgraced his family? Suddenly, she knew. This was the real Malcolm - before the War, before Rose died, before his life became a wasteland. She saw the Malcolm who remained uncorrupted - gentle, intelligent, gallant - before tragedy and loss took their bitter toll.
Could she help reclaim that man - whole, healthy, with renewed vigor and pride in himself and his heritage? Hope stirred in Blythe's heart. Yes! Yes with God's help, she could.
In 1870, Blythe Dorman, the high-spirited daughter of a prosperous Western rancher, falls hopelessly in love with a mysterious stranger - Malcolm Montrose, a man scarred with tragedy and defeat. A Virginian who has come to the California gold fields in the hope of recouping his family fortune, Malcolm again meets with misfortune and disappointment.
As part of a secret bargain made with her dying father, Malcolm takes Blythe as his bride back to his Virginia home, where instead of the happiness she anticipated, Blythe finds only disillusionment and loneliness. The unselfish commitment and undiscouragable love that Blythe expends in her gallant struggles to heal a star-crossed marriage frame the poignant plot of Gallant Bride.
For Rod it was a moment out of a thousand dreams. Yet the reality was more than he could have imagined.
"Blythe!" He said her name and in his voice was all the hope he'd thought was lost.
The woman he saw was even lovelier than the girl he remembered. She was still as beautiful - tall, slender, the glorious auburn hair, the soft, vulnerable mouth and peachbloom skin - as when he had first met her at Montclair.
At sixteen, Blythe had been shy, eager to be accepted and loved, now she was poised, fashionably dressed, self-confident. But in those same velvety brown eyes Rod saw what he was searching for - that she still loved him.
Would it be possible to bridge all the silent years that had separated them? Or had they changed too much? Had too much happened to make them different from the people they had been when they had fallen in love? Was it too late?
Shadow Bride continues the story of the Gallant Bride of Malcolm Montrose, Blythe Dorman, who struggled so unselfishly to save a marriage that should never have been, that ended tragically before her son's birth. After heartbreak, despair and sorrow, Blythe gathers up the fragments of her life and builds a new one for them both in England. Before she can find lasting happiness, Blythe must come to terms with her past, confront her heart's truth, search for her own heritage. To find her real identity and true love, she has to meet these challenges and choices as the woman she has become, not as the girl she once was.
Even while Randall was speaking, it was Pietro I saw, the tenderness in his dark eyes looking at me, the caress in his soft voice. In Randall's voice there was not a shred of emotion; nor was there any in his expression.
How should I respond? What should I say?
I knew this was the hardest decision I would ever have to make.
Either choice would demand a different price. Was I prepared to pay it?
Was love enough in the one to bridge all the other differences of nationality, religion, and heritage? Was family loyalty, future security enough to decide for the other?
What was my destiny?
The heroine of DESTINY'S BRIDE is Druscilla Montrose, who first meets Randall Bondurant when she is a bridesmaid at his wedding to her cousin Alair Chance. Eight years later, after Alair's mysterious death, they meet again in a chance encounter. This leads to a strange series of events in which Druscilla debates, then accepts the position offered to her by Alair's widower. Against all advice, Dru becomes governess to her two motherless little cousins, a difficult decision because of the suspicions and accusations of family and friends that Randall might have been responsible for his wife's death.
She travels with the family to Italy. Here against the romantic background of nineteenth-century Europe, Druscilla receives two unexpected offers: One is a love that will mean giving up her heritage; the other requires a decision more important than any she has ever had to make before.
Dru's choices bring her into conflicts of loyalty, challenges of faith and duty, and threatened danger as well as romance.
The lake held special memories of her times with Jeff. Here they had spent hours talking, feeding the swans, and skipping pebbles across the smooth surface, creating circles within circles.
On afternoon in particular, Faith remembered. Jeff had kissed her. It was their first real kiss. In it were all Faith's dreams, her longings, her hopes, her loyalty and love.
"Don't ever stop believing in me," Jeff begged.
"I promise, I never will," she had whispered.
Did Jeff remember that day? For Faith, that day, that kiss, that promise were a treasured memory, cherished as a special bond between them of mutual trust and love. Could he have forgotten?
It was to be a very special summer, the summer of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the sixtieth year of the English Monarch's reign. It was the summer Faith Devlin had looked forward to with great anticipation - the pressures of her debutante year were over, Jeff Montrose was back in London, and her American cousins were coming for a family reunion at the beautiful country estate of Birchfields.
It was the summer of unexpected encounters and romantic surprises - but it was not to be the summer of Faith Devlin's dreams…
"Why, Cara, why did you do it?"
"Maybe no one wants to see me as I really am. Maybe in this family it isn't all right to be different. And I AM different, Kitty, whether anyone wants to admit it or not."
"But, Cara - it just seems like tonight you set out deliberately to cause trouble."
"Even YOU don't understand, do you, Kitty?"
"I do, I mean I'm trying to. You're my twin. I want to understand!"
"Yes, I know we're twins, but who am I?" demanded Cara hotly. "We're not like paper dolls cut out of the same cardboard!"
Although identical in appearance, the Cameron twins were dramatically different in temperament. Cara, vivacious, adventurous. Kitty, sensitive, introspective.
But these differences had never kept them from being each other's best friend, confidante, and close companion; that is - until one fateful summer - the summer everything changed.
It began as a carefree vacation at Cape Cod; a summer filled with sailing, swimming, shell-searching, dances and parties. But slowly Kitty starts to suspect that her twin is keeping something from her. Puzzled, hurt, and more than a little resentful, Kitty longs to find out what it is. But something hidden in her own heart prevents her from doing so, because - Kitty has her own secret she cannot share.
"You see I must go, don't you, Kitty?" Kip asked.
Everything in her cried out, No, I don't understand. What about her dreams, her desires, the life they had planned together? Then she remembered the epitaph on the headstone in the old hillside cemetery, the one that had made such a lasting impression on her: "What I gave, I have; what I spent, I saved; what I kept, I lost." It had been true a hundred years ago, and it was just as true now. If she did not let Kip go freely, he would go anyway, and she would lose him. You could not keep what did not want to be kept. Eventually Kip would be lost to her unless -
"Of course, Kip, I understand."
When Kitty Cameron, in love with the dashing Kip Montrose, is forced to accept the dangerous career he has chosen for himself, she faces a difficult challenge. In order to follow her heart, she makes a decision that will irrevocably change her own life forever.
Determinedly overcoming parental objections as well as her own sensitive nature, Kitty sets out to accomplish her goal. Drawing on inner resources of faith, Kitty emerges from her sheltered girlhood as a woman of enormous bravery, spiritual strength, compassion, and courage. Having survived physical danger, heartbreak, and loss, Kitty discovers that sometimes the reality of love is more fulfilling than its illusion.
"Have you any plans for the rest of the day?" he asked.
"Plans?" she echoed.
"Whatever they were, cancel them." He grinned.
Crystal nodded, dazed, knowing somehow that if he had proposed a trip to Mars she would have been helpless to refuse. She had come to Virginia to work, not to fall in love - certainly not with someone like Kip Montrose. Both Kip and his ancestral mansion, Montclair had captured her imagination. The history of the house intrigued her as much as its master.
Even ten years after the end of WWI, the families of Mayfield, Virginia, still feel its destructive effects. With his days as a dare-devil flying ace behind him, Kip Montrose is having a hard time settling down in the small Southern town and finding a new direction for his life. At the same time, the twins, Cara and Kitty Cameron, are also trying to rebuild their lives shadowed by loss.
Then, the arrival of Crystal Kirk, an attractive young career woman, to rent Eden Cottage, and the return of Garnet with Bryane, and her English companion, Jill, sparks excitement, romance, as well as unexpected problems.
The era of the Roaring Twenties brings new challenges to the younger members of the Montrose and Cameron clans, as they search for new purpose for their lives, face their inherited destiny, and hope for lasting love. Suddenly a senatorial campaign tears the families apart and plunges old friends into a bitter political battle in which both winners and losers attain unexpected results.
Craig Cavanaugh opened his briefcase and drew out the folder containing the manuscript. It was getting dark when he finished reading. No question, he thought, Kitty Traherne can write.
Her face came back into his mind. He saw the pain in her eyes, heard the urgency in her voice, as he recalled the passion with which she had told him her reason for writing this controversial book. A slight flush had swept over her pale face as she said, "I think this country is in danger of being drawn into another foreign war, Mr. Cavanaugh."
Kitty Traherne, who had been a field nurse in France during World War I, knew the madness of war firsthand and couldn't bear to see it happen again. She had to risk doing whatever she could to prevent it, however the public might respond - and despite the bitter rift she was creating between herself and her family, the Camerons. She had to tell people about the horror of the last war, remind them of the awful price paid by the young men who were made to fight it.
As an editor, Craig Cavanaugh dealt with writers all the time. But something about Kitty Traherne touched him in a different way. Craig would fight to publish her book - and in the process he hoped to get to know its lovely author…
Niki's heart was thrumming as the taxi stopped with a jerk in front of the gray, stone building behind tall, black iron gates. On a metal plaque was engraved Les Soeurs de Merci. Niki thrust several franc notes into the driver's grubby hand and got out. For a few minutes she stood staring through the rungs of the gate. Years ago another young woman - perhaps her mother - had stood in the same place, a baby in her arms, the child she was going to give up. What emotions had run through her heart.
Niki had come to France to seek her true identity and to experience the richness of her French heritage. But what begins as a romantic, carefree summer holiday for Niki, her stepbrother Luc Montrose, and their friend Paul Duval, ends with the outbreak of war, changing their lives forever.
As World War II ravages Europe, Niki wants desperately to serve her native country in its time of need. She finds herself making dangerous decisions and facing dramatic challenges aware of - but unable to do anything about - the impact the war is having on her loved ones back at Montclair.
Caught up in the firestorm of world conflict, this courageous young woman with an unknown past faces an uncertain future, with only her newfound faith to sustain her.